The background of the invention will be discussed in two parts:
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to toys and more particularly to a toy for accelerating unpowered toy vehicles along a roadway.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Toy vehicles such as miniature cars are well known in the art, such vehicles commonly employing accessories such as track sections to provide a roadway. Such track sections are usually flexible and often times have clamp means for clamping one end of the roadway to an elevated structure for permitting the toy vehicles to operate under the force of gravity. More elaborate arrangements include banked curved sections which enable the track sections to be joined to form a closed loop. In such a closed loop arrangement, a toy vehicle accelerator is generally employed such as that shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,590,524 issued July 6, 1971 and assigned to the assignee of the instant invention. In the accelerator of that patent, a housing is provided with a portion of the roadway formed therein with counter-rotating rollers on opposite sides of the roadway portion for engaging the sides of the vehicle to provide the acceleration power. The rollers are motor-operated at a generally constant speed by an electrically powered motor.
Another toy vehicle propulsion unit is shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,599,365, the unit being spring-operated and actuated by a trigger contacted by the vehicle to release the spring actuated arm which engages the rear of the vehicle to propel it forward.
Propulsion systems for toy vehicles utilizing air are shown and described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,469,340; 3,697,071; and 3,789,540. In the first two mentioned patents, the systems employ conduits through which the vehicles travel under force of the air while in the last mentioned patent, the compressed air is utilized to activate an air-operated motor within the vehicle itself. In this case, the coupling means for transferring air to the vehicle must be movable to a position out of engagement with the vehicle.
It is an object of this invention to provide a new and improved toy vehicle accelerator.
It is another object of this invention to provide a new and improved toy vehicle accelerator for unpowered toy vehicles.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a toy vehicle accelerator having vehicle engaging rollers operable through a wide range of speeds by an air pump.